


signed in blood, paid in full

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, Blood, Choking, Explicit Sexual Content, Gunplay, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, Temporary Character Death, trope typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:20:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: MAY 26. MONACO.A ghost breaks into Lee Donghyuck's hotel room
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Comments: 46
Kudos: 203
Collections: '00 FIC FEST ROUND TWO





	signed in blood, paid in full

**Author's Note:**

> #00112. I took a few liberties with the prompt for narrative purposes -- hope this is still something the original prompter might have liked :) This was such a creative, fun prompt to write!
> 
> [Playlist.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1L9AZVDTsrhqtL6UzyIQmP?si=1i9T4cn1TpuBK5x3SPykhg)

The first time Donghyuck sees Renjun it’s through the scope of a sniper rifle. Edges of the lens warped, an image on a screen. His mouth moves but there’s no sound — eyes sparkle but they don’t seem alive. He’s wearing a suit and a bowtie, and his delicate fingers wrap around the stem of a wine glass like it’s the throat of a past lover. Not enough to bruise, but possessive all the same. Liquid the colour of the Styx — or of blood. Water, wine. Someone’s life, held so carefully in those beautiful hands

Behind him a socialite takes a cracker smeared with camembert and cups her hand under it, the lilac feathers in her hat dancing in the wind. The river is beautiful and blue, the lawn of the mansion perfectly manicured, squares of brilliant green grass pasted like computer images and adorned with marble statues and angels falling dramatically from heaven. Frozen in time, preserved unto infinity.

Donghyuck’s finger rests on the trigger. Heartbeat steady. Breathe in — the scent of the trees, the crack of the branches.

Breathe out. The gavel strikes the block. The gun jumps in his hand and blood sprays through the air, the bullet cutting clean through Huang Renjun’s heart.

Everybody screams.

*

It’s an easy job. In and out. He’s on the plane three hours after Renjun’s body hits the grass, sipping wine and browsing stocks on his laptop. The money is in his account a week later and he enjoys his hard earned holiday in France, waiting for the heat to cool off, eating enough food to gorge himself and wandering around in cargo shorts and sandals like any self respecting tourist.

In fact, he enjoys an extended holiday. He plays a delegate’s son’s bodyguard for a while — feels like he spends more time in Lee Jeno’s bed than actually protecting him. It’s almost a shame when they have to part. Jeno kisses his hand and gives him a sad smile and asks to keep in touch, one last time, and Donghyuck tells him he never knows when they’ll meet again.

He hopes he has a good life. He’s a good person, and certainly someone that doesn’t deserve to be caught up in the spider’s web Donghyuck sits happily at the center of. He doesn’t deserve to be caught like a fly in a trap.

Monaco is next. An expensive glass of wine in one hand and a book open in front of him, the Medditerenean sparkling in the distance and the sun hot and bright. His phone is on silent, sitting beside a half eaten slice of tiramisu, and the world is as beautiful as it can be. He knows eventually he’ll be called to reality — his handler on the phone, an email in his inbox — but now he can appreciate the picturesque beauty and the fact that his perfect Parisian accent and expensive watch meant that he was assumed to be one of the thousands of millionaires that called Monaco home.

Donghyuck takes a sip of his wine and frowns when the glass comes up almost empty. The disadvantages of staying in, he supposes. No waiters on his every beck and call, ready to refill his glass at a moment’s notice. His chair scrapes as he stands up and he stops to swoop down and take another bite of the tiramisu.

He’s a little drunk — on wine and the sun — and when he steps inside he feels almost blind, the change in light so sudden he finds himself blinking to try force his eyes to readjust. He still has the tiramisu fork in his hand, and as he turns to place it on the television cabinet something crashes into him.

Donghyuck hits the floor. A fist to the jaw, his face shoved into the carpet. Something is someone, and they’re vicious. They fall down with him and punch him again, and he’s still blinded from the change in light, and now his ears ring, but it doesn’t mean he can’t fight. He swings his arm up and jams the fork into their side and shouts, kicking up and trying to buck them off.

The fork clearly does nothing — or maybe they don’t care. They jam their knee into his ribs and drive the palm on their hand into his throat, winding him and causing his strength to fail enough that they can pin him to the ground — hands wrapped around each of his wrists, bodyweight settled on his hips.

Through the multicoloured haze pin pricking all through his oxygen deprived brain, Donghyck sees his assailant's face.

It’s like seeing a fucking ghost. The face through his rifle scope, the sharp slope of his nose, these dark, empty eyes. Huang Renjun is smaller in person, lithe and powerful, and the effect of his presence is enough that Donghyuck freezes — eyes wide, lips parted in a silent scream.

Renjun lets go of his wrist to punch him again, pinning him back down before he can free his hand properly.

“Surprised to see me?” he says. He’s speaking French, but it’s with a light Chinese accent. Somewhere north. Dongbei? His file had said he was born in New York City, the same as his parents, the same as his grandparents. Why did he have a Chinese accent?

It’s a moment of panic that triggers his fight or flight — except Donghyuck’s switch has always been set to fight. Donghyuck tries to buck him off again, twisting his wrists, and is surprised when Renjun lets go of his left hand — but the surprise is short lived. Renjun drives his palm into Donghyuck’s solar plexus, and then follows it up with a punch in the jaw.

“Huh?” he says, eyes wild and wicked. “Are you fucking surprised to see me?”

“I shot you,” Donghyuck wheezes. He tastes blood. “I fucking shot you.”

Renjun’s fist collides with his cheek, a shock of pain sparkling through his senses, everything glittering like shards of glass flying through the air.

“Yeah?” Renjun says. There’s a dark patch on the edge of his black dress shirt, though the fork is nowhere to be seen. If Donghyuck breathes deep he can taste the blood. “You did. Guess it didn’t work.”

Donghyuck bucks up at that moment — as Renjun’s fist is cocked back — knocking him off. His legs come loose and he spills out across the floor, flat on his back.

How the fuck is he alive? Donghyuck had put a bullet through his fucking heart, and yet he looks completely normally — better, maybe, considering he was currently engaged in hand to hand combat with the man who’d been paid to kill him.

“I saw your chest cave in,” Donghyuck says. He needs to fight. He needs to fight but he’s shaking — his hands are shaking, and he feels _fear_ , real true honest to god fear, gripping at the husk of his heart, worming into the empty chamber where his soul should be. “You’re dead.” Renjun looks up at him from the floor, grinning, the devil himself on Earth.

“Then you’re in hell with me.”

Renjun flips to his feet and comes swinging again, not a moment’s pause. Not a moment for Donghyuck to even understand how the man whose blood he’d seen spray through the air is able to roundhouse kick him in the stomach. It knocks the wind from him, but Donghyuck retaliates and breaks the wine bottle over his head. When Renjun gives him a Glasgow Kiss he comes back with a switchblade, and after that Donghyuck doesn’t remember much.

It’s warm when he wakes up. Warm and dark, the background soundtrack cars on the highway and chatter in French from the balcony beside his. He’s lying on his side on the floor and the stars are out, the drapes of the room blowing in the ocean breeze like the wedding dress of a runaway bride.

When Donghyuck moves he realises he’s covered in blood. Sticky, tacky, not quite dried, if only due to the sheer amount of it soaking through his Armani shirt. There’s smears all over the floor — boot prints, a size too small to be his own. A handprint on the door — though there’s no fingerprints. Renjun must have been wearing gloves.

So much blood on the balcony it looks like a murder scene.

Music drifting up from below. Blood on the balustrade.

Donghyuck stumbles to the shower and steps in still clothed, resting his forehead against the tiles and trying not to shake.

He doesn’t tell his handler. After his shower where he scrubs his skin raw, he stands on the balcony watching the waves shatter against the coast, swirling the wine in the bottom of his glass, afraid that if he drinks it it’ll taste like his blood.

He doesn’t know _why_ he doesn’t tell his handler, because he really should. Renjun tried to kill him. He’s undoubtedly in trouble, though judging by the amount of blood that wasn’t _his_ on his clothes, he can only assume that Renjun was in trouble too. Maybe dead for real, this time.

He knows it’s a vain hope, but he doesn’t like to think about the other possibility. He’d put a bullet through his heart and seen him come back — to assume he’d simply died after breaking into his hotel room and trying to kill him is foolish.

Lee Donghyuck is not a fool.

He balances his phone on the tips of his fingers and stares at Jaemin’s number.

What would he even say? How does he explain that he failed? That a ghost had just broken into his hotel room?

He’s in danger. That much is certain. The NIS can’t know that, but he knows someone else who might want to.

*

“Chinese Intelligence,” Chenle says. He throws the file across the table, the way one might throw a card down during a poker game. The room is empty and filled with smoke floating in from the front, and a dreary electronic beat pulses through the walls, neon lights shifting across sharp cheekbones. “Oooo, you’re playing with fire Donghyuck.” He laughs and leans back in his seat, the front legs of the chair lifting off the sticky floor as he waves his hand in the air to signal another round of drinks. “Don’t know what you got yourself into.”

“So he’s a spy?”

“Yes,” Chenle says. “You’re so smart, I can’t believe you worked that out. Yes, he’s a fucking spy. Which is why the NIS wants him dead, _obviously_.”

Donghyuck would pistol whip anyone else who talked to him like this — but for Chenle it’s all part of the game. All part of the fun. The price he pays for the billion dollars amounts of information Chenle has at his fingertips.

“He’s not dead,” Donghyuck says. Chenle’s husband comes through the swinging door in the back, two cocktails in hand, and places them on the table.

“Thanks babe,” Chenle says, and Donghyuck honest-to-god doesn’t know who’s talking to. He makes a kissy face at his husband, then turns back to Donghyuck, wolfish grin on his face. “Guess you’ll have to deal with that then, hmm?”

*

The third time Donghyuck sees him, Renjun tattoos his hands around his neck.

“Nice to meet you again,” Renjun says, as he pins him to the wall of a hut in Siberia. It’s summer and the whole place is a swamp — filled with mosquitos and stinking, putrid mud — a haunt of a war criminal his government wants dead. A haunt of a war criminal that Renjun’s wants protected. His beautiful fingers wrap around Donghyuck’s windpipe and adrenaline courses through him, a drug injected straight to his heart that causes it to beat like a rat in a hot bucket. “Did you miss me?”

“No,” Donghyuck says. It’s a lie. Renjun’s eyes are alive, and they burn, and Donghyuck should take the opportunity to kill him but he looks so beautiful — poised to strike like a tiger in the gloom — that he can’t help but be captivated, even as pinpricks of black break out across his vision.

“That’s a shame,” Renjun says. His grip slackens, then he slams Donghyuck against the wall again, muscles bulging under his skin tight vest. “Because I missed you.”

He escapes. Slippery as smoke through his fingers — like oil on water. Staining Donghyuck’s memory, shifting and iridescent. There’s no blood left behind, just a collar of bruises, just a shortness of breath, a pressure in the chamber of his chest he can’t identify. Just purple and yellow, pressed against his windpipe, Donghyuck staring at the imprint of Renjun’s hands on his skin as he kneels in front of the mirror and takes his cock in his hand, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood.

*

It’s Prague next. A month later. The tinkle of glass on the carpet doesn’t bother him — though perhaps it should bother him that he’s come to recognise the sound of Renjun’s breathing at this point. An adjustment so easy, the kind of muscle memory they didn’t tell you was a side effect of this profession. Cataloguing the little things to help you survive.

“How do you keep breaking in?” Donghyuck asks. He’s cleaning his rifle — the same one he’d used to stick a 7.62mm caliber bullet through Renjun’s chest.

The tip of a knife presses against his jugular, and Donghyuck freezes, heat pooling his gut, pupils narrowing, everything zooming in to the presence of the man behind him. “You have poor security,” Renjun says. “That’s how.”

“ _Why_ do you keep breaking in, then?”

A better question. One more revealing.

The blade shifts slightly, Renjun’s other hand running down the length of his arm until it rests against the hand holding the cleaning cloth. He feels the blood begin to trickle down the side of his neck.

“It’s fun.”

Donghyuck gets it. He wets his lips, trying not to shift into the point of the blade and cut himself open.

The joy of the chase. Of besting someone. Renjun is up three to zero. Donghyuck wishes he could count the first gunshot as a one, but somehow he knows if he argues with Renjun about it he’d come out the loser. His tongue is silvered and sharp, and god Donghyuck wants it on his neck — to replace the tip of the blade, lap the blood from his skin.

“What else do you think is fun?”

“Killing?” Renjun offers. Trailing the knife up, a sting as it opens up the first layer of his skin, slicing through the tiny vessels and causing more hot blood to dribble out. There’s an ache in his chest — a swirling mix of lust and fear, heart jumping as Renjun’s fingers intertwine with his own in a parody of intimacy found only in restraint.

“Then why don’t you kill me?”

“Who’s to say I haven’t before?”

There’s a tone in his voice — Donghyuck can read the smile, can read the gunpowder on his words. His slim fingers smooth across the back of Donghyuck’s hand, and he can’t help but shiver, because there’s conviction in Renjun’s words. He knows something.

“What?”

“Maybe you’re my ghost, too, Lee Donghyuck.”

The knife goes straight into his jugular.

It’s not much later when Donghyuck opens his eyes. Sunset paints the sky peach orange above the arches and columns of the church opposite, the bell ringing the night’s entrance. The room stinks like a slaughterhouse.

Renjun is sitting on the bed, holding Donghyuck’s sniper rifle. He’s put it back together, and he’s weighing it in his hands, running his fingers over the grooves, fitting them into all the places Donghyuck’s hands have been.

“Hello,” Renjun says. He’s not looking at him. He’s looking at the gun that should have taken his life. “You should wash.”

He kisses Renjun for the first time in the shower. Blood slipping from his skin, running pink in the plastic tub below them. Pushed up against the wall, steam rising around them. Renjun is fully clothed and his white shirt turns see through, exposing his dark nipples, all the lines of his muscles like the ridges of mountains on a map. A cartographer’s masterpiece, soaked in pink that drips from them in rose petals, blood caked on Donghyuck’s lips.

Renjun fits his fist around Donghyuck’s cock, slick, hot, wet. He presses an open kiss to his lips, licking into his mouth, and Donghyuck tries not to whimper his name when he comes.

*

“You’re in trouble,” Chenle says. They’re not in Los Angeles this time, they’re in Morocco. Chenle’s Arabic is a hundred times more fluent than Donghyuck’s, and Chenle’s husband — Minghao, Donghyuck learns — is fluent in a local language, ordering tea and couscous for them then stepping out onto the terrace to smoke. On the table beside them a group of men with more hair on their chests than on their heads are playing cards, laughing with their bellies and providing enough noise that Donghyuck feels fine having this conversation in public. They’re speaking Russian, anyway.

“Let me guess, the Chinese?”

“No. Your little ghost. Someone must be letting him in.”

“I don't think so. He’s good,” Donghyuck says. “He keeps finding his way in.”

He neglects to tell Chenle about Prague, or what had happened afterwards. Antwerp. Copenhagen — the way Renjun had followed him like they were tied together. The way Donghyuck had followed him, too — the surprise on Renjun’s face as they’d almost knocked each other over while playing tourist in the palace in Stockholm.

“He’s going to kill you,” Chenle says.

“He’s already tried to.”

It grazes dangerously close to the truth. A flower opening up, unfurling to show the bloodied secrets held within. He already tried. He already succeeded. Donghyuck died in Prague. He wonders if he died in Monaco, too.

“And he’ll succeed.”

There’s a pause, Chenle’s lips pursed together, head tilted ever so slightly to the side.

“What?” Donghyuck asks. Music filters in from the street, shouts and laughter. One of the men opposite them stands up, pulling a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “I don’t like it when you look at me like that. What do you know?”

Chenle surveys the room for a second, then leans in. Donghyuck does too, until Chenle’s lips almost brush his ear.

“He’s a defector from the DPRK. Not a double agent, but on the run. China doesn’t know.”

They both settle back into their seats and Donghyuck tries his best to keep his expression casual, like Chenle hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him. Chenle does a better job of it, picking at his nails then raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Donghyuck says, careful, careful.

“You don’t have to do anything. But you know, now.”

He doesn’t want to think about the lengths Chenle must have gone to to find that info. Unprompted, digging so deep he’d probably risked his life. But then if that wasn’t Chenle in every way possible — living for the thrill of it. For knowing what no-one else does.

“What’s he doing here?” Donghyuck says, changing the subject, flicking his head towards where Minghao is leaning over the navy blue balustrade. His cigarette dangles from his fingers, and he’s yelling over the din of the city at someone on the ground.

“He’s here to offer you a choice,” Chenle says, following the sharp change in conversation with ease. He places his hands on the table, palms up. “Right now, either you kill Huang Renjun, or Huang Renjun kills you. Those are the two options most people have.” He shuts his fists and brings them together, then opens them again. “I offer a third one. Someone dies, or you disappear. That’s what Minghao does. He’ll make you disappear.”

“Just like you disappeared?”

Chenle’s smile is enigmatic. “Love blooms in the strangest places, doesn’t it?”

“And Renjun?” Donghyuck asks. The other part of the equation.

“He’s a wanted man.” Chenle waves a hand, dismissive. “Death has a way of catching up to us all, eventually. It’ll take its due.”

*

Donghyuck doesn’t take the deal, though it sits in the back of his mind. A black cloud, a looming threat. Or an escape switch. A back door if it gets too bad. He goes back to Seoul and stays there, and he knows at least Renjun wouldn’t be stupid enough to risk meeting him on home turf. Donghyuck isn’t worth that much. It’s just a stupid game.

It’s just a stupid game, but Donghyuck feels like he’s sliding closer and closer to checkmate, the walls closing around him.

Someone has to die.

*

“Huang Renjun is alive.”

The drop of the manila envelope onto the desk in front of him is like a casket lid slamming shut. The chair scrapes when Jaemin pulls it out and when he sits down he sighs, hair perfectly coiffed, muscles bulging underneath the cotton of his stupidly expensive shirt.

Donghyuck acts surprised. Raising an eyebrow. Trying not to give away that he knows the shape of Renjun’s mouth — what it feels like to fit his fingers against his ribs through the cloth of his shirt. How he’s rutted against him and held his cock in his hand, tasted his blood on Renjun’s lips. How in Stockholm they fucked in a museum bathroom, Renjun’s hand fit so perfectly around his throat, his cock in his ass and his hips stuttering against him.

How Renjun had stuck a knife into his jugular.

“Oh?”

Jaemin pushes at the envelope. “Either that or he has a twin we don’t know about. Wouldn’t put it past the Chinese.”

“Huang Renjun is American,” Donghyuck says, pulling the envelope over to his side of the table with a single finger and unsealing it.

“Trust me,” Jaemin says, rubbing his temple absentmindedly. “I wish he was. He’s Chinese Intelligence. And he’s alive.”

Donghyuck pulls the photos out of the envelope. They’re face down. “Are you sure?” he asks, almost scared to turn them over.

“Take a look.”

Donghyuck flips the photos over. They’re Renjun alright — messy hair, white shirt, white shorts, sunglasses on but the shape of his nose unmistakable, all that power packed into a tiny frame. Those beautiful hands that held a knife like a paintbrush.

“He was in Monaco when you were,” Jaemin says. Donghyuck swallows.

“Last year?”

“Yes. Did you see him?”

“No,” Donghyuck says. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“Didn’t notice anything?”

“No. It was just a normal holiday.”

Jaemin’s eyes bore into him — scrutinising, digging all the way through the black gunk sitting in his hollowed out chest like he’s trying to find his secrets. Too bad that by now Donghyuck knows how to hide from Jaemin. That heart’s too good for someone in this line of work — he’s harsh, he’s wicked smart, but Donghyuck knows how to dismantle him all the same. He gives him a blank look and Jaemin sighs.

“How did he survive?” Donghyuck asks, when he’s sure Jaemin is satisfied he’s telling the truth.

“We don’t know. You said you saw the bullet hit him.”

“It blew through his chest.”

“Maybe you missed.”

“I don’t miss.”

“Well,” Jaemin says. He rests his hands on the table, palms down, the slightest quiver of frustration in his voice. “Don’t miss again.”

*

When they meet again, it’s not by chance. It’s in Busan — right under the NIS’s nose. Donghyuck doesn’t miss the implication of it all, the amount Renjun is risking just by being here. By _waiting_ , like he knew Donghyuck would come to him.

“Business?” Donghyuck asks. He'd already turned the room inside out. Nice to be on that side of the equation for once. He’s wearing Renjun’s shirt. It’s a little too small for him — far too big for Renjun. He’s not wearing anything else, and he’s lying on the bed, gun held lazily on his hand. The grip feels oily. He waves it at Renjun who — to his credit — barely flinches, crossing the room to remove the crystal stopper from the rum bottle and pour himself a glass.

“Seems like it’s pleasure,” Renjun says. “You here to kill me?”

“Would have shot you if I was.”

“Good boy. Knew they trained you well. Not like the NIS to be so messy.”

“What would you know about me?” Donghyuck says. They’d been speaking Mandarin, but here he swaps to Korean. Home field advantage. Though as Renjun starts to speak he remembers what Chenle had said — maybe not as home as he’d hoped.

“I know a lot about you. Top of the class, second only to your superior and one time lover — Na Jaemin. Though you’re in the field, and he’s in the office. You’re not even under NIS, are you? How’s it being a hired gun?”

“Keeps the bills paid,” Donghyuck says. He doesn’t let on how maddening it is for Renjun to know this much about him — the ease with which he’s peeled off all the firewalls and layers of identities Donghyuck has built up. Being on equal footing like this is not a comfortable territory. He’s always existed on the high ground, rifle in hand. Now Renjun is looking him in the eye, and he’s jamming his knife under his armour.

Renjun takes a sip of his rum. “Yeah? Why are you in my hotel room?”

“Why do you keep turning up in mine?”

“You just said you weren’t here to kill me.”

“Semantics.”

“With a gun?”

Donghyuck looks at the gun, then back at Renjun. The magazine hits the bedspread with a thud, and the bullet in the chamber flies off when he racks the slide, landing somewhere behind him with a rattle. “Don’t you think I look better with a gun?”

Renjun takes another sip, then sets the glass down.

“Hand me the gun.”

Donghyuck picks up the magazine with his left hand, the gun still held in his right. “Why?”

The bed dips. Renjun’s hands on his calves, rolling him onto his back, climbing up him like a tiger prowling. He straddles Donghyuck’s torso and holds out his hand, wiggling his fingers, gaze expectant.

It’s like a pin through his chest — Donghyuck a prized insect mounted under glass.

“Hand me the gun, Donghyuck.”

He hands Renjun the gun. Renjun runs his hands over it — points it away from him, at the roof, pulls the slide back to check there’s no rounds in it.

“Open your mouth.”

“Why?”

“Open your mouth.”

The barrel is cool on his tongue, the taste of metal and sweat mingling. Renjun angles it to wedge it between his teeth, forcing his lips apart.

“Good boy,” he purrs. The beast in chest roars, hot lust pouring through his senses, a searing desire to have Renjun's body held against his. Renjun’s eyes are black as coal and when he leans forward to whisper in his ear — forcing the gun further into his mouth — Donghyuck can feel his erection pressing into his chest. “I’m going to fuck you now.”

*

He still tastes gunpowder days later. Still feels the ache in his teeth from where Renjun had held the gun in his mouth while he’d fucked him. Still feels the phantom shape of the barrel inside of him, too — when Renjun had filled him up with his cum and fucked it back in with the gun, jamming the mechanism and forcing Donghyuck to completely disassemble it and clean it afterwards.

There’s a sense of humility in cleaning your lover’s cum from your gun, just like there’s a sense of humility in being fucked by someone who has killed you.

A spark ignites in the black depths of Donghyuck’s heart, and he exhales, tasting smoke on his tongue.

*

Chenle spins in his chair, fingers steepled, cackling like a comic book villain.

“Cut it out,” Minghao says, sitting on the couch with his Gucci slipper clad feet kicked up on the armrest. “You’re really not funny, Lele.”

The neon fish tank is the only lighting in the room apart from Chenle’s comically large computer, and they all look washed out, skeletal. Though maybe it’s the fact Donghyuck suspects they both live on stimulants and beer rather than actual food that contributes to their appearances.

“I’m hilarious. Evil. Spooky. And maybe I have a lead for you too, Donghyuck,” Chenle says. He rests his feet on the floor, stopping his rotations. "When did you say you were meeting Renjun?”

“I don’t know,” he bites his lip. “He hasn’t been in contact.”

“Maybe they broke your cipher.”

“They did not break my cipher,” Donghyuck says. That much he knows for certain. He’d be in a cell if they did. “He just isn’t responding.”

“You sound so sure he wants to respond.”

“He does.”

He doesn’t tell Chenle what he knows. Doesn’t tell him after Renjun had fucked him in Busan he’d stripped naked and Donghyuck had seen the scar blooming across his back, like a black hole collapsing, a New Years firework, ugly and rupturing below his left shoulder blade. The exit wound of a 7.6mm caliber bullet. A matching scar on the front, the size of his thumbnail, twisted tissue over his still beating heart.

Donghyuck never misses. In Busan he holds part of the bullet that had punched straight through Huang Renjun’s chest in his two hands. It hangs from a chain around Renjun’s neck, hollowed out, flat against his sternum, cold between them when Renjun pushes him back down onto the bed and climbs on top of him — warm and so utterly alive, every kiss breathing life into his cinder-filled lungs.

“You’re crazy,” Chenle says. “But I’ll let you know. Do you want to know now, or?”

“Afterwards,” Donghyuck says. He swallows. “I want to see, first.”

*

The rendezvous happens in Japan of all places. Renjun has a mission — someone’s someone’s someone, a higher up’s higher up. A friend of a friend with information. Donghyuck intercepts. He strings the contact up by his tie on the ceiling fan — blood dripping into a pool on the floor — and kicks back in a chair, switchblade planted in the cherrywood table, brushing up on his Japanese with the novel that had been left face down on the empty bar top, pouring himself a glass of plum wine.

Renjun arrives thirteen minutes later.

“That’s an antique,” he says, pausing in the doorway, brow furrowed, eyes as dark as ever.

Donghyuck looks up, slow, leisurely. Points at the dead man behind him, wordless, then points at the table, as if to ask what Renjun is referring to.

“The table,” Renjun offers. He doesn’t leave the doorway, part of the bead curtain still hanging off his shoulder. The rotation of the air duct over the window makes the light in the room dance as if the two of them are underwater, and Donghyuck puts the novel back on the table surface and pulls his knife out.

“It’ll survive. Can’t say the same about him.”

“Didn’t think you were one for theatrics, Donghyuck.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

Renjun still hasn’t moved. The room is cool — it’s the middle of December and they’re in Hokkaido — and the body only smells slightly. Smells more like blood, really. There’s a few droplets on Donghyuck’s shirt, and he’s glad he’d worn black.

“Why are you here?”

Donghyuck shrugs. Renjun isn’t stupid. He wonders if he knows Donghyuck is supposed to kill him. That they’re forever entwined. Directly responsible for each other in one way or another. The devil’s claws wrapped around his ankles, leaving marks like scoured brimstone. There’s a scar on the side of Donghyuck’s neck — a knife blade driven under his skin. Three to zero. Three to one, today.

“Thought I’d have some fun.”

“And kill my contact?”

“That’s a harsh word, isn’t it?” Donghyuck says. He runs his finger over the flat of the knife, wiping off the last few drops of blood. “I neutralised him.”

“You’ve never been one for semantics.”

“Times change.”

“What’re you doing?” Renjun asks. His hand is on his hip. He has a gun.

“What are _you_ doing? Why did I live in Prague?”

“Why did I live the first time we met? I missed. You missed. Mine was intentional. Don’t know about yours.”

“I don’t miss,” Donghyuck echoes. Renjun raises an eyebrow.

“Neither do I.”

The gun goes off as Donghyuck hits the floor. He flips the knife back up into its handle and knocks the table over with his shoulder, swinging it around to shield himself from the next shot, the noise like a bomb in a trash can despite the silencer.

“You just missed,” Donghyuck says, eyes darting around the room, cataloging every possible movement, every escape route. There’s debris everywhere — a liquor cabinet opposite him, magazines stacked in corners, dining tables and chairs, a mop and bucket leaning against the wall.

“Maybe that was on purpose?” Renjun offers. Donghyuck takes a breath, bracing his shoulder against the table. Renjun’s boot hits the linoleum floor, and a drop of blood falls behind him. “C’mon, Donghyuck.”

It’s a one, two, three move. Donghyuck grabs a chair and throws it. Renjun fires. Donghyuck comes after the chair, shoulder first, charging, knocking Renjun over and causing the gun to go flying from his hand, discharging somewhere into the roof, dust spitting down on them. Renjun’s head cracks against the floor and his eyes are glazed over when they open. Donghyuck slams his elbow into his nose.

The blood is instant. It pours from Renjun’s nostrils, and he gasps, spitting it into Donghyuck’s face and driving his knee up into his crotch.

“Better,” he hisses, stuffy nosed.

It’s a bloody fight. Donghyuck’s switchblade goes flying across the floor, joining Renjun’s gun in some pocket dimension. They roll over, blood from Renjun’s nose dribbling all over Donghyuck’s face as Renjun's fist collides with his jaw, his knee digging into his side and his other hand grasping at the front of his shirt.

“Put up a fight,” Renjun hisses, and it’s in Chinese. Donghyuck spits back in Korean.

“Go to hell.”

The way they fight is like the way they fuck. Vicious. Uncoordinated. All feeling, all instinct, all emotion bleeding from every pore in their bodies as they roll around in the floor, teeth and fangs and nails like claws. Donghyuck gets his gun out of the holster and only succeeds in firing at the roof before Renjun knocks it away with the heel of his palm, jabbing his fingers into the soft flesh of Donghyuck's stomach before he gets a chance to tense his abs.

“Did I fuck you with that gun?” Renjun spits, and his DPRK accent comes through thick, bloody in spirit and in reality, another glob spat in Donghyuck’s face.

“I cleaned it,” Donghyuck says. He’s underneath him, Renjun’s legs wrapped around his waist, his hands on Renjun’s wrists, stopping him from choking him.

“Such a good, obedient lapdog, aren’t you?”

Maybe it was always meant to come down to this. They always fight. They always bloody their knuckles. They leave carnage behind — bathe in it, like if they stepped into a blacklight they’d be all aglow, every inch of their skin covered in another’s viscera. It’s beautiful in a way — to know someone so touched by death belongs to you. To know you belong to him, even as his hands close around your neck.

Even as your vision spots, and all you can think to do is try to kiss him.

He kisses you. You taste him. You _bite,_ his blood coppery in your mouth.

Donghyuck throws Renjun off him and rolls over, crawling forward, ribs aching, groping at the floor until his hand closes around the cool handle of his gun. He swings around and Renjun freezes, knocked on his ass, hands braced on the floor, eyes wide like chips of bone amongst the bloody mess that his face has become.

Everything is still.

“You missed,” Donghyuck croaks, rolled onto his side. He spits on the floor, a glob of blood he’s unsure of the origin of. It probably doesn’t matter at this point. Renjun is entwined in him in every single way. Their blood is the same, beating through the dried husk of his heart. “Why did you miss?”

“Why did you?” Renjun asks. They’re still speaking Korean. It occurs to him, belatedly, how much Renjun must trust him to hear him like this. To betray his origins, a part of him that’s buried so deep he's risking his life a hundred times over just by speaking.

“I didn’t.”

“And yet here I am.”

The collar of his shirt is open. The bullet around his neck is stained with blood.

“Does it end like this?” Donghyuck asks. Renjun grins at him.

“Do you want to find out?" He groans, more blood dripping from his nose. "You should fulfill your mission, Donghyuck. Na Jaemin is waiting for you. He trusts you. He believes in you. He believes you’ll kill me this time.”

He doesn’t want to kill Renjun. He knows he doesn’t. He feels his pull — his magnetic field. He feels the parts of him embedded in his skin — not just his knife, but his teeth, all his aches and bruises, all the time he’s stolen the air from Donghyuck’s lungs. All the times their bodies have moved together, slick with sweat, slick with blood, fucked up in only the way they could manage.

Tenderness should not be found in violence. Not in two people like them. There is no intimacy in death — in grasping someone’s heart in your hand and crushing it to dust. Only emptiness. A flickering hope for redemption. If he kills enough for his country, maybe they won’t send him to the darkest depths of hell.

“Do it,” Renjun says. “You beat me. Do it.”

“Renjun.”

He wishes he could kiss him one last time. Wish this wasn’t it. He can’t walk out of here. Death will always catch him. The trigger gives resistance and Donghyuck takes a breath.

“Donghyuck,” Renjun says. “It’s okay. Do what you have to do.”

He looks beautiful even with his nose broken. Donghyuck doesn’t know how to admire many things — thinks he's a blunt weapon sometimes, made to smash into whatever the ROK wants him to.

“I don’t want to.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Then make it.”

Taking someone’s life forms a bond between you and them. They won’t ever breathe again. Might not even know your name. But there’s a thread tied between you and them — a link in the afterlife, like a piece of string around your finger. You’ll feel the tug, one way or another.

When Donghyuck kills Renjun it’s like shooting himself. He feels the bullet pass through his flesh, feels it tear through his heart. The jerk of his body, the way he falls flat against the floor. Donghyuck _swears_ that he can hear the last beat of his heart.

It’s like all his worst fears come spilling up, erupting like a geyser. Regret, tinged midnight black. He’s afraid if he opens his mouth it’ll all come spilling out — the fact that the second the bullet leaves the chamber he wishes he hadn't pulled the trigger.

The gun hits the floor with a clatter and he crawls — hands and knees, dust and dirt and god-knows-what-else smeared on the palm of his hands, a fist clenching at his insides, ears ringing, shaking — he crawls towards Renjun. Towards where he’s sprawled out on the linoleum, dark pool spreading around him, eyes blank and empty.

“I’m so sorry,” Donghyuck says, like it’ll undo the past minute. He kneels beside him and twines their fingers together, and Renjun’s skin is still warm. “It had to happen. I wanted it to be me, Renjun-ah. You understand that, right?”

Renjun doesn’t answer. Lips slightly parted, blood matted on his once perfect nose. Donghyuck scoops his arms around him and picks him up with a grunt — because Renjun is small but he isn’t light, he’s all muscle — pulling him against him.

“Renjun? Hey, don’t be stupid. It’s three to one, right? You’re still winning. C’mon.”

The blood soaks through his clothes. Through his pants, onto the floor. Renjun still doesn’t answer, and Donghyuck presses a kiss to his forehead, praying that he’d missed again. Cradling his body against him, biting back the wetness in his throat.

Renjun’s first breath is rattling. Choked. He coughs and blood sprays everywhere — wet droplets that land on the front of Donghyuck’s shirt.

“You actually fired,” Renjun says, incredulous.

Donghyuck sobs.

*

It’s snowing when they get outside. Thick, cold flurries, swirling around them like ashes of a burning city, like the apocalypse has come. Like a phoenix has risen, subzero, clawing its way out of the underworld. Rebirth, the two of them. Footprints in the snow bloodied, the village a ghost town.

“Are you going to tell me what happened back there?” Donghyuck asks. He wants to sob when Renjun answers — because it's a confirmation that he’s real. He’s real and he’s alive, and he’s standing next to him.

“I don’t know if you’d believe me. I don’t know if I believe it myself.”

“I didn’t miss, did I?”

“You’ve never missed.”

*

Their clothes end up in the tub. Soggy, sticky, laden down with blood and pink snowflakes. Drip, drip on the floor of the room, like teardrops, like a leaky faucet. Renjun’s Gucci coat spread out against the heated tiles. At least he hadn’t been wearing it when he was shot.

The wound is already healed. The steam rises around them and in the shower, blood running in rivulets down their chests, Donghyuck presses his fingers to the skin above Renjun’s heart. Feels it beat beneath his skin, beneath the twin scars he’s given him.

“You never missed,” Renjun repeats. He touches the side of Donghyuck’s neck, ever so lightly, fitting the pad of his index finger against the scar running along his jugular.

“Did you know?”

“I guessed.”

“Renjun…”

“It’s okay.”

His lips tremble, almost, when Renjun presses their mouths together. Water splattering against the floor, copper in his mouth. Body pressed against body. Donghyuck feels the ridges of the exit wound on Renjun’s back, rubbing away the blood caked at its edges. Dripping soap and shampoo, everything running pink, everything swirling down the drain.

The sheets are soft. Fresh, clean and crinkling. Unmade on one side, like Renjun had been sleeping with a ghost. Like there was always a space for Donghyuck’s body, curled tight within him. Donghyuck on his back the mattress, staring up at those dark, dark eyes — not dead but raging with wildfire.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Donghyuck murmurs.

“And you still took the shot.”

“I—”

Renjun’s mouth covering his. Hands smoothing up the length of his arms, splaying him out below him. Skin on skin, warm blood thrumming through his veins. “It’s okay,” Renjun says. “I understand. You’re mine. I’ve killed you.”

He put a bullet through Renjun’s heart. It hangs on the chain around his neck, digging into his sweat soaked sternum as Renjun rolls their bodies together.

He put a bullet through Renjun’s heart. The snow falls in eddying swirls outside. Renjun slides into him, murmuring Donghyuck’s name, elbows braced on either side of his head, sweat shining on his brow. His hips slam against Donghyuck’s and he digs his nails into his back, biting at his bottom lip.

There is no tenderness in violence, but there is here. In these two violent creatures, in this dance they fall into. Renjun cradling his face like he might break. Donghyuck’s hand trapped between the two of them, his hips twitching and jerking, whimpers caught in the back of his throat. An unspoken understanding.

You are mine. I have killed you. I killed you and the universe put the breath back into you — it brought you back to me.

“You have a part of me,” Renjun says. Palm flat against Donghyuck’s heart. “I have a part of you.” He lifts his hand and draws a circle with the tips of his fingers, like a child tracing patterns in dust. “We share the same soul, split in two.”

“I have your soul?” Donghyuck asks. There’s no ethereal glow where Renjun touches him, just the same old skin he’s worn his entire life, scattered with moles and the white flecks of long healed scars.

“Is that so hard to believe? You saw me come back from the dead.”

“I always thought I didn’t have one.”

The sheets rustle. Renjun fingers draw across his chest, down his sternum, pressing into his stomach. “We all do. I guess sometimes we look in the wrong place.”

He kisses him. Clean. Cool. Open mouthed, no more words. Just the soft slide of their lips. Just the rush of blood beneath skin. Two hearts. One soul.

The lock on the door clatters open at four am. Donghyuck is standing naked in front of the kitchenette making tea, and the light in the room is murky and blue. The man that comes through is in all black. He’s carrying a gun — silenced. He doesn’t look around the room, because he’s already found his prize. Renjun — fast asleep, sprawled out in the covers, head turned to the side, naked chest glowing in the moonlight.

Donghyuck doesn’t think before he throws the kettle at him. It hits his head with a metallic thud and bursts open, boiling water flying everywhere. The man _screams_ , free hand flying up to his face.

Two gunshots sound. The headboard cracks and splinters.

Renjun has a gun in his hand. He has Donghyuck’s gun in his hand.

“He was NIS,” Donghyuck says. His clothes are coated in blood. So are Renjun’s, though they’d cleaned most of it out last night. He’s wearing his coat over the top, and at least that’s clean — though it’s freezing, still snowing, and they have to break into a tiny shop to get a change of shirts. Donghyuck leaves a wad of 2000 yen notes on the counter as repayment — both for the broken lock and the inconvenience of having two strange men break into your shop at five am.

“Are you sure?”

“We worked together.”

Nice enough guy. Shame it had to end like this. Blood on the snow.

“Do you think they know?”

Donghyuck shakes his head. The snow crunches beneath the heel of his boot. “They were looking for you. Jaemin will suspect though. You used my gun.”

“You can’t go back.”

Renjun isn’t looking at him. He’s looking out into the endless white. Donghyuck has already called a cab, and the gun feels red hot in his pocket.

“They don’t know I’m here.”

“Let me rephrase that. You’re not going back.”

Renjun’s hand finds his wrist, leather of his gloves smooth against his skin, sliding down to tangle their hands together and squeeze for a second before he lets go.

“Why?”

“I can’t kill you. They can.”

Donghyuck stops. Renjun stops too, their movements perfectly in time.

“China doesn’t know about you,” Renjun says. “I made sure of that. But the NIS are a different beast, and I can’t do anything about that.”

 _China_. Sometimes Donghyuck forgets they’re on opposite sides. He forgets the world exists outside the two of them — that they’re just two pawns in a game of chess. Born in the same place, two different sides of the war.

“What if I tell them you’re neutralised.”

“‘You put a bullet through an agent sent to kill me’s chest. Your word is as good as shit.”

“You shot him.”

“Why did I have your gun?”

“You overpowered me and took it from me.”

“Why didn’t I kill you?”

“Mercy?”

“You’re stupid.”

There’s so much of him in Seoul. His sister. His home. His plants that were no doubt wilting on their shelf because his neighbour never watered them. All his pet projects, the bedside table he’d been building on and off for the past year. The coat he’d received from his grandfather before he’d passed. His grandmother’s wedding ring, meant for the person he’d take a bullet for.

There’s so much of him in Seoul. The taxi pulls up to them, headlights cutting through the gloom of the snowstorm. Beside them the drain trickles.

There’s so much of him in Seoul. And yet his soul stands opposite him, once perfect nose slightly broken, a bullet over his heart, midnight black eyes, hands in the pockets of his coat. There’s a gun in his pocket. It’s hot. It has been inside of him.

“Get in the car, Donghyuck.”

*

“Was I right?”

“What was your hypothesis?”

“You cannot kill your own soul.”

“Shut up."

Chenle grins at him, canines like fangs. “Where is he?”

“Out in the front. He likes your frogs.”

“They’re Minghao’s. Not mine.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t trust you with anything living.”

“Asshole.”

Chenle’s computer whirrs. On the top left screen there’s a YouTube video titled “Cat rescue 24/7 cam”. The bottom two screens are off. The top right shows five different messaging programs, all their conversation windows empty.

“I don’t have to ask why you’re here, do I?” Chenle says, finally, meeting Donghyuck’s eyes again.

“You’re smart enough to figure that out.”

Chenle makes a face that’s halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Bring him through then. I want to see proof Lee Donghyuck has a soul.”

The first thing Chenle says is: “You looked taller in the photos.”

And the first thing Renjun says is: “You looked prettier.”

Donghyuck doesn’t have friends. Not really — though if he did he would say Chenle was his best one.

It’s like how he doesn’t have a heart — though if he had one it’d be full at the sight of Chenle and Renjun bickering, the verbal sparring that pauses when Minghao comes in the room with a bottle of wine and four glasses. Glances shared as drinks are poured.

“Does the offer still stand?” Donghyuck asks, glass in hand. The wine is white. Resemblance to blood aside, he’s never liked red — despite his multiple attempts to try.

“Of course. It stands for life. I’ll always want you in my corner, Donghyuck.”

It’s as sentimental as Chenle will ever be. They’re standing on the balcony together, pale blue skies, sunshine on their skin. Renjun is beside him. He’s not speaking. He’s watching the waves break against the shore, wind tousling his hair, sloping smile on his lips.

All this time, all these years. All those rendezvous. The moments in which they’ve held each other. The blood on their hands. The sunrises swallowing their naked bodies. He’s never looked this serene, or this young. Like a teenager, like the world hasn’t fallen on his shoulders. Like he hasn’t died — twice.

“Then we’ll take it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spare thoughts? <3
> 
> Thank you so much to Chloe for her help in editing this and keeping the narrative clear... sorry about the gunplay LOL
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/dongrenle) and


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